Jerry Falwell

the Tea Party, theNRA

and the 1970’s “fundamentalist” Coup

The Indiana Klan was a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society in the United States that organized in 1915 to affect public affairs on issues of Prohibition, education, political corruption, and morality. It was most strongly anti-Catholic, but also opposed Jews and blacks. It opposed immigration from southern and eastern Europe, which was sharply reduced by a new law in 1923. In Indiana, the Klan generally did not practice overt violence but used intimidation in certain cases. Nationally it practiced racism and terrorism against minority ethnic and religious groups.

The Tea Party of 2010, is now basically the Christian Coalition, the evidence is the amount of Pro Life extremism seen on a scale unrivaled ever. The methods of this coup are the same as the “Fundamentalist” Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as the seizure of the National Rifle Association from “Sportsman” to Conservative Extremist, looking exactly like the John Birch Society. This is not an “Anti Christian” attack but a sober interpretation of facts.

Reed was named in the scandal arising from lobbying work performed by Jack Abramoff on behalf of Indian gambling tribes. E-mails released by federal investigators in June 2005 revealed that Reed secretly accepted payments from Abramoff to lobby against Indian casino gambling and oppose an Alabama education lottery.[16]Additional e-mails released in November 2005 show that Reed also worked for another Abramoff client seeking to block a congressional ban on Internet gambling. These cases are being investigated by multiple federal and state grand juries and by the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Abramoff pleaded guilty to three felony counts in federal court, raising the prospects of Abramoff testifying against others.

Those e-mails and other evidence revealed the participation of the Christian Coalition in the alleged fraud, particularly the Alabama chapter of the Christian Coalition, which received large amounts of donations from the casino money. It is alleged that Abramoff engaged Reed to set up an anti-gambling campaign to include the U.S. Family Network, the Christian Coalition, and Focus on the Family in order to frighten the tribes into spending as much as $82 million for Abramoff to lobby on their behalf. To represent him in connection with the scandal, Reed retained defense attorneyW. Neil Eggleston of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. Eggleston served as White House associate counsel during the administration of President Bill Clinton.

In December 2005, three Texas public interest groups filed a complaint with Travis County Attorney David Escamillaon December 1, 2005, alleging that Reed failed to register as a lobbyist in 2001 or 2002 when he was working for Abramoff.[22] Escamilla said on March 27, 2006 “his office had concluded its investigation — but that a two-year statute of limitations on misdemeanors from 2001 and 2002 had expired.”[23]

On June 22, 2006 the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs released its final report [24] on the scandal.

The report states that under the guidance of the MississippiChoctaw tribe’s planner, Nell Rogers, the tribe agreed to launder money because “Ralph Reed did not want to be paid directly by a tribe with gaming interests.” It also states that Reed used non-profits, like Grover Norquist‘s Americans for Tax Reform, as pass-throughs to disguise the origin of the funds, and that “the structure was recommended by Jack Abramoff to accommodate Mr. Reed’s political concerns.”

Unlike the Mainline denominations at this point, most Southern Baptist clergy remained conservative. And the laity were overwhelmingly conservative. In the late 1970’s Southern Baptist conservatives began their historic reclamation of the denomination, led by Judge Paul Pressler and theologian Paige Patterson. Critics and the media portrayed it as a “fundamentalist” coup. But it was actually a populist uprising against liberal elites. Pressler and Patterson, with their supporters, did not want their church to resemble what had happened to United Methodism.

It sound so “Cute”, ” it was actually a populist uprising against liberal elites”. What is it in reality, it is the Dixiecrat elements of the Republican Party using the intimidation tactics of the Ku Klux Klan on Moderates is it not? That’s why I call it “Dobson’s error”, when people cut the 17th Century extremism and look, it’s the worst elements of Christianity, not the best. It’s Ku Klux Kracker from the Ku Kristian Koalition alias the Ku Kea Karty, you aren’t a poor bunch of abused Christians you are the Dixiecrat edge of the Ku Klux Klan.

Reprove, Rebuke, Exhort as Bob Jones Sr. notably called for is not the language of politics, it’s the language of Religious extremism of the English and American Civil War. States Rights, Nullification, Drown the Government in the Bathtub? It’s not the Government that needs drowning it’s the Christian Coalition, and the Koch Money makes it that much worse.

Dear Editor,

I read your article on the GOP candidates visiting Bob Jones University with great interest, as I live in Greenville, South Carolina (current home of Bob Jones University.) This article provided a great deal of information to those ignorant of what Bob Jones stands for, but not enough. I have included some more information below:

In regards to Bob Jones University’s involvement in politics, it is interesting to note that several current members of the US Congress are BJU alumni (including Asa Hutchinson, one of the prosecutors in the impeachment of President Clinton) as well as the Speaker of the SC State House (David Wilkins) and the Speaker Pro Temp of the SC State House (Terry Haskins).

Further, Bob Jones University also dominates the politics of the local community. In 1996, the Greenville County Council passed a resolution condemning the “Homosexual Lifestyle.” Later that year, there was a Gay Pride March through downtown Greenville that involved over 1,500 people. Bob Jones University’s response? BJU students passed out brochures throughout the county inviting people to an Anti-Gay rally at the local stadium. This distribution of material was called, appropriately, “Operation Saturation.”

Recently, Bob Jones University has opposed the opening of the new downtown arena and was one of the leading groups in attacking arena leadership for scheduling “controversial” acts. Also, Bob Jones University was one of the leading forces behind the county’s recent vote to uphold the current laws prohibiting alcohol sales on Sunday.

Bob Jones University’s racism has not been only in admissions. In 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and President Lyndon Johnson ordered flags to be flown at half-staff, Bob Jones University refused, calling King “A traitor to the Gospel of Christ.” When this was announced at an evening chapel, many students applauded. (Bob Jones also awarded an honorary doctorate to Reverend Billy James Hargis, most widely known for his statement “God ordained Segregation.”)

King was not the only Christian leader they denounced. Bob Jones University withdrew from Youth for Christ, the National association of Evangelicals and the National Association of Religious Broadcasters, due to their perceived “Liberalism.” (This, it should be noted, refers not to Political Liberalism but Theological Liberalism, which is an entirely different thing from Political Liberalism.)

Bob Jones University also denounced Billy Graham for the same reasons. This was despite Graham’s and many of his associates’ graduation from Bob Jones University.

Bob Jones University is quite anti-Catholic. When Pope John Paul II visited Columbia, South Carolina, the late Bob Jones Jr. said that he would “sooner speak with the Devil himself” than speak with the Pope.

A frequent speaker at Bob Jones is Reverend Ian Paisley, who is also head of the Ulster Democratic Unionist Party in the UK. He was the most prominent opponent of the Good Friday Accord prior to its passage. He also had to be temporarily removed from the European Parliament chambers after he held up a sign “John Paul II = Antichrist” while the Pope was making a speech.

NRA Lobbying

The NRA formed a legislative affairs division in response to debate concerning passage of the 1934 National Firearms Act,[23] some of the earliest federal gun control legislation in the United States. The NRA supported the act along with the Gun Control Act of 1968. The two acts collectively created a system to license gun dealers and imposed taxes on the private ownership of machine guns.[24]

In 1975, the NRA created the Institute for Legislative Action to lobby for Second Amendment rights as a complement to its core mission of supporting hunting, conservation and marksmanship.

Until the middle 1970s, the NRA had mainly focused on sportsmen, hunters and target shooters, and had downplayed issues of gun control. The 1977 annual convention in Cincinnati would be a defining election for the organization and came to be known as “The Cincinnati Revolution.”[25] At the convention, the leadership had planned an elaborate new headquarters in Colorado, designed to promote sportsmanship and conservation. Within the organization, now existed a group of members whose central concern was Second Amendment rights. Those activists defeated the incumbents in 1977 and elected Harlon Carter as executive director and Neal Knox as head of the ILA.[26][27]

After 1977, the organization expanded its membership by focusing heavily on political issues and forming coalitions with conservative politicians, most of them Republicans.[28] With a goal to weaken the Gun Control Act of 1968, Knox’s NRA successfully lobbied Congress to pass the McClure-Volker firearms decontrol bill of 1986 and worked to reduce the powers of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In 1982, Knox was ousted as director of the ILA but began mobilizing outside the NRA framework and continued to promote opposition to gun control laws.[29]

At the 1991 national convention, Knox’s supporters were elected to the board, and named staff lobbyist Wayne LaPierre as the executive vice president. The NRA focused its attention on the gun control policies of the Clinton Administration.[30] Knox again lost power in 1997, as he lost reelection to a coalition of moderate leaders who supported movie star Charlton Heston, despite Heston’s past support of gun control legislation.[31] In 1994, the NRA unsuccessfully opposed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, but successfully lobbied for the ban’s 2004 expiration.[32] Heston was elected president in 1998 and became a highly visible spokesman for the organization. In an effort to improve the NRA’s image, Heston presented himself as the voice of reason in contrast to Knox.[33]

The National Rifle Association is like a Fighter escort wing Flying Cover for the Bomber Force , the Bomber Force being the Pro Life Extremism. We can get distracted fighting the National Rifle Association again and again, the Christian Right (the Tea Party of 2010) is more of a defender of Traditional Sexual and Social values than a Gun Lobby, but the Gun Lobby piggybacks it’s extremism on top of the Vaginal Probe, Destroy all the Planned Parenthood Clinics and Life Begins at Conception. Crush the NRA and the Pro Life Movement would still be there, crush the Pro Life Extremism and the NRA will see the error of their ways?

Look, these Ku Klux Krackers would like to win a Presidential election, but they can’t their Ku Klux Krackerism is too extremist, but they can cause another spike in the enacted Pro Life at Conception stuff again if we forget that it’s not the NRA but the Pro Life movement that drive the Ku Kea Karty train.

Race and diversity

The conclusions of a review of 112 studies on Christian faith and ethnic prejudice were summarized by a study in 1980 as being that “white Protestants associated with groups possessing fundamentalist belief systems are generally more prejudiced than members of non-fundamentalist groups, with unchurched whites exhibiting least prejudice.”[85] The original review found that its conclusions held “regardless of when the studies were conducted, from whom the data came, the region where the data were collected, or the type of prejudice studied.”[86] More recently in 2003, eight studies have found a positive correlation between fundamentalism and prejudice, using different measures of fundamentalism.[87]

A number of prominent members[dubious – discuss] of the Christian right, including Jerry Falwell and Rousas John Rushdoony, have in the past supported segregation, with Falwell arguing in a 1958 sermon that integration will lead to the destruction of the white race.[88][89]

In Thy Kingdom Come,Randall Balmerrecounts comments thatPaul M. Weyrich, who he describes as “one of the architects of the Religious Right in the late1970s”,made at a conference, sponsored by a Religious Right organization, that they both attended in Washington in 1990:[90]

In the course of one of the sessions,Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let’s remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.—Paul M.Weyrich

Bob Jones University had policies that refused black students enrollment until 1971, and admitted only married blacks from 1971 to 1975. The university continued to forbid interracial dating until 2000.[91] In an interview with The Politico, University of Virginia theologian Charles Marsh, author of Wayward Christian Soldiers and the son of aSouthern Baptist minister, expressed the view that the Christian right and segregationism were closely connected.[92

Some elements within the mainstream Christian right have been influenced by Dominion Theology authors. Indeed, some writers have applied the term “Dominionism” more broadly to the mainstream Christian right, implicitly arguing that that movement is founded upon a theology that requires Christians to govern over non-Christians. Mainstream conservatives do not call themselves “Dominionists,” and the usage has sparked considerablecontroversy.